What is a Monthly Active User (MAU)?
A Monthly Active User (MAU) is a metric that counts the number of unique users who engage with a website, app, or platform within a 30-day period.
How to Calculate MAUs
Calculating MAUs involves identifying and counting the unique users who have engaged with your product or service in some way during a given month. As you can imagine, this can vary greatly depending on the website or application.
One of the most common ways to define a monthly active user is simply to count users as active based on their session activity. For example, a user who visits a website or engages with content (clicks, watches videos, etc.) can be considered active.
Beyond just visits to a website, you can also use engagement metrics that meaningfully align with the goals of your website or app. This can include making a purchase, posting a comment, or uploading a photo.
The key is to ensure that each user is only counted once per month, regardless of how many times they engage with your website.
When to Use MAU vs. DAU
| Metric | Best For | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| DAU | Daily-use products | Social media, messaging, news |
| WAU | Weekly workflows | B2B tools, productivity apps |
| MAU | Infrequent use cases | Travel, banking, job search |
Use MAU when your product has a weekly or monthly use case, when users don't need to engage daily to get value, or when you're reporting to investors and stakeholders (it's an industry standard).
Why Measure MAUs?
Measuring MAUs provides immediate feedback on how engaging a product or service is to its users.
Unlike vanity metrics, which may only show an upward trend without indicating real engagement, monthly active user metrics provide valuable insights into how meaningfully users are engaging with your website or application.
For instance, while an app might boast increasing installs over time, tracking monthly active users can reveal whether these users actually return to the app, engage with its features, and contribute to its growth. This distinction is crucial for guiding product development, marketing strategies, and making informed decisions that drive genuine engagement and revenue.
MAU Quality: Beyond the Number
Not all MAUs are equal. Measure quality alongside quantity by looking at:
Engagement depth — How many actions does each MAU take? How many features do they use?
Retention quality — What percentage of this month's MAU were also MAU last month? What's the breakdown of new vs. returning users?
Monetization potential — What's your revenue per MAU? What's the conversion rate to paid? What's the lifetime value by acquisition cohort?
Growing MAU can mask problems if growth comes from low-quality sources, existing users are churning while new users replace them, or active users are becoming less engaged over time.